Get your Brilliant Message Out of Your Head and Into the World

“I know why the rabbit always finds the bear,” my two-and-a-half-year-old niece murmurs in the dark, long after we’ve finished reading and turned out the light.

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In a few seconds, I hear her little snore.

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I sit next to her, so charmed by the investigation her brain is chewing on–and reminded how those drowsy moments can invite the magic answers to swirl right in.

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You know, those amazing insights that pop in right before you doze off. The ones you don’t even need to write down because they are so perfect and cool.

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That fantastic idea for your tagline.

The story you want to include in the chapter you’re writing.

The solution for a client you’ve been puzzling about.

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I’ll definitely remember this, you think. How could I possibly forget it?

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In the morning, that beautiful idea disappears like a mouse tail slipping under the bureau. Wait, did you even see it?

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And instead of that sleepytime sureness, the familiar, old not-knowing takes over.

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Lately, I’m allowing more time like that in my life. Sleeping more. Walking when I’m stuck instead of forcing myself to “think” it out. Keeping a notebook for those random magic insights.

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And providing more of that for my clients. Time and space for asking more questions, letting down the old guards, and being together in the quiet, making room for new language and previously unconsidered notions to slip in.

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What if we could be as receptive to the magic as a two-year-old drifting off to sleep?

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We’ve heard it all our lives:

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Less is more. Don’t think–feel! Hold on loosely. Let it go, etc.

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It’s not always so easy to do when our business is on the line, though. Right?

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What words or ideas or solutions might pop in if you weren’t trying so hard or resisting or procrastinating (or whatever you do when you’re stuck) so much?

I’m at a retreat in Topanga, California. Sipping wine outside in March.

Having my face painted by an intuitive body painter.

Who talks to me about the queen.

Something in me resonates.

I tell Star, “Yes, that kind of feels right.”

And then something else butts in.

“Wait a minute, I’m the scullery maid, not the queen.

I provide the service. I am not royal.”

This very flip is what I often experience with clients after a Golden Thread session-
after your stories have revealed the truth of your essence.

And it is hard to stay there. It is so easy to drift back to what’s familiar.

I so get it.

Like this. It feels good to walk and breathe like a

queen with this paint on my face. Not too long after the retreat,

however, the scullery maid comes knocking at my door.

It takes muscle to keep her out. She’s so familiar.

I want to share with you something I wrote in my journal

in the moment when I did feel like a queen.

Not because I want to dump random journal-writing on you.

But because I want to encourage you to explore and claim your true essence. Really, take courage.
If I can share this, you can SO share yours!

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I am a Queen.

I am the blue flame of clear expression. Dreamer and seer.

I am here to awaken you to the story of you. Of all that you are.

My kingdom is expression. I sit on a simple throne of earth, water and wood. I was born in mud.
Crowned by experience. Dripping details, intuition, inspiration. Alchemy. Pulling pearls from your dreams.
Polishing diamonds from your coal.

My heart opens more each time I listen.

I take in. I let go.

I let a tear fall–and paint the spot silver.

It’s part of me. It’s part of you.

Nothing to fear. So much room.

Together we step into the old, the new and this royal moment.

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Ok, now it’s your turn.

I’ve got an invitation for you:

If you’d like to learn how you can discover your life’s Golden Thread—

“You either walk inside your story and own it or you stand outside your story and hustle for your worthiness.”Brene Brown

As I was making a present for my baby niece a few weeks ago, this kept happening. With just about every stitch, the thread would transform from straight and smooth to a crazy thrashy tangle.

I untangled that night more than I sewed… and the big vision I had for what I was making kept fading.

It felt so familiar and it struck me the same thing happens when you go looking for your own story… you find it, and for a while it’s smooth and straight. You spot that thread and follow its path and it’s helping connect all the pieces together. Nice and clear.

Then when you tug it a little it devolves into an unrecognizable mess, looping back on itself, requiring you to stop everything and just unravel.

Makes you want to throw the whole thing out the window, no?

The big vision of YOU definitely fades.

You move outside of your story again, like Brene Brown describes.

You start hustling for your worthiness.

Ugh.

There are lots of threads in your story. Lots of emotions. Lots of shame, regret, fear dancing around in there. Seriously, when it comes to sorting it all out, tangling like this is a guarantee

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Sometimes the way through is to have someone sit and look at that whole tangled mess with you.

What I’ve learned in the last few years is that we all have an inability to look at our own story and see if for what it is. Friends shouldn’t let friends dive into their story alone. It can be gnarly in there.

The guests start zipping up their down jackets, attempt to pull last bits of meat off the roast pig, and the microphone just sits there on the grass.

Come on, it says, now or never. I grab it and then grab Jen.

Falling into a rhythm so ancient and familiar, we start to sing Grand Funk Railroad’s “Some Kind of Wonderful,” just like we did 100,000 times when we were 10. Listening to it now, it’s a grindy-sexy and male anthem, but we loved delivering it in opera voice and cow voice in the way back of the station wagon and as we walked up West Street in our Dr. Scholl’s.

One of my oldest friends, Jen, got married a few days ago and her new husband had requested there be no formal, tear-jerking toasts at the wedding. No hilarious yarns from the golden days of decades-old friendships. So I didn’t prepare anything. But as the day started to wind down and the couple headed off to their future, it felt wrong not to call up a single moment of the past.

Jen was a great sport and we gave the song as good a go as we could. (I was so in the moment, I didn’t even put down the cupcake I was eating.)

So often I wait for the perfect moment. Hit pause until the better technology comes along. Put it off until the right alignment floats into place like a magical dove. Even typing these words of hesitation feels like sinking my fingers and mind into muddy quicksand. Blahdy-blahdy-blah. It’s so, so, so tiring to wait, isn’t it?

It felt so great and free to be up there singing that song all out, in a grabbed-at moment with my oldest friend that would never come around again.

What about you?

And what is right on the other side of putting it out there?

If you were a child of the amazing 70s, you might remember the line in the song, “Can I get a witness?”

I didn’t know what that meant when we were little and just assumed it was a witness in court. Later I learned it was a tradition in certain African-American churches for a speaker who shared a testimony or insight to invite others to clap or shout “Amen!” by asking, “Can I get a witness?”

It’s kind of what we’re all trying to do, isn’t it? Just get a witness?

I woke at 3 a.m. yesterday to a woman screaming under the bed. I soon realized it wasn’t a woman—it was Simon, the skunk who’d been living beneath our house the last few months.

The peaceable arrangement we’d enjoyed with him seemed to be over.

And, the story, as I liked to tell it, was over, too.

Here’s the way I liked to tell it:

We tamed a skunk! He eats from the same bowl as the cat. He waddles over when we shake the kibble bag. He stands still as we pass him on the way to the car.

He’s SO amazing!

And here’s the way it actually is:

Twice now, we’ve burrowed under the covers as an oily, eye-burning, stomach-wrenching cloud seeps into the bedroom. Simon is just doing what he does when under duress. As for me (also under duress), I’m not quite clapping for a dancing skunk. I’m washing the floors with vinegar, burning incense, and hanging our clothes outside in the trees.

Part of me still wants the story to go a certain way.(We tamed a skunk! He’s awesome!)

The truth is, though, I’m sleeping with a lavender-doused bandana wrapped around my face while John loads peanut butter and cat food in the Have-a-Heart trap.

I love this line from the author David Foster Wallace:

“The truth will set you free,
but not until it is finished with you.”

If you’re like me, there’s a way I WANT to tell a story, but then the truth of it ends up to be a very different matter by the time it’s finished with me.

One of the most common things I hear from
business-owners who want to share their story,
is that they don’t know where to start.

So, here’s a handy little exercise, inspired by Simon,
as you’re working with yours.

What’s a story you wanted to tell one way… then the truth kept coming around and telling you something different?

Take a peek at your relationships,career, or just your long-held-onto-expectation that something in your life was supposed to be a certain way, until it was clear that it wasn’t that way anymore.

I just read the War of Art by Steven Pressfield. What a perfect book. He writes about Resistance, something at which I consider myself an expert. Hand me a great topic to write about that would move me forward, and watch me run outside to rake leaves or vacuum the car.

But it’s been my desire to work on the issue, and this year, life doled out a few experiences to do just that… and the book got me thinking about what it all means.

Here are a few moments from my resistance highlight reel:

Resisting jumping into the jungle. In January, I went to Mexico with my good friend Joanne and her daughter, Manami. Joanne was in the final stages of cancer (I was really resisting that) and this trip would be her last.

Manami and I went zip-lining one day. We hiked a few miles, then from high on a rickety platform, we peered down into an endless and dense jungle.

Monkey-mind starts working: This is so high and so rickety. I am so going to plunge right into that jungle. There’s no way in freaking hell I’m going to be able to do this. This was a huge mistake. How do I get out of this?

Mind you, I was standing in gloves and helmet, tied to the cable, with a line of people raring to go behind me. I wanted only to sit for an hour, getting ready to get ready, but could only resist so long. I closed my eyes and jumped. Gravity took care of the rest. It was really fun and so free. And every successive (12 of them) jump was fine.

Resisting writing a eulogy, part 1. Joanne asked me to speak at her funeral. I really wanted to show her what I was going to say before she died, but it wasn’t finished. OK, it wasn’t even started—I was totally resisting writing it. The memorial service got closer and closer and I knew the story I wanted to share, but something was missing. I wrote in the car on the way to California. Not it. Not yet.

On the morning of the service, I still didn’t have it done, and went walking by the ocean in San Rafael. I found a trail she’d once shown me.

Oh, hello, monkey mind: What the hell am I doing going for a hike? There are going to be a TON of people there. This has to be something she would love. Help me, help me, help me. OMG, I am so not the person to do this at all. This was such a mistake. How do I get out of this?

I kept walking into the mounting panic. Then a poem I read when I was in my 20s dropped into my head. I got back to the hotel and Googled it. It was the perfect missing piece. I put it in.

Before I got up to speak at the service, my heart was pounding so hard the friend sitting next to me said he could hear it. Then when I was up there, Jo smiled down from her big picture on the screen behind me. It all went just fine and felt so good to talk about our long friendship. And I think she would have gotten a kick out of it.

Resisting writing a eulogy, part 2. Two weeks after Jo’s service, my dad died unexpectedly. We had a complex relationship and part of me had already been PRE-resisting giving his eulogy for years.

Thoughwriting the obituary (thank you, newspaper deadline) and sharing stories about him was a good warm-up, on the morning of the funeral I still didn’t have a clue what I was going to say.

Cue ol’ monkey mind chorus: There must be some mistake. Who am I to do this? How do I get out of this? Blah-dee-blah–dee-blah.

Then, in the shower, the whole thing just dropped into my weary brain. Four qualities, four stories about him that showed the gruffness that covered his generous and tender heart. Complete.

And again, heart pounding, I stood up there with my prompt words written on an index card—and it was fine. I think he might have liked it, too.

In all this, here’s what I learned…

Resistance to speaking the truth, taking the next step, starting the new project, etc. is very real. But that Big Moment is also real—the urgency that so many people I talk to seem to be feeling right now. A time of no turning back. The moment when your little zip-line trolley leaves the platform, when the audience’s eyes all lock on you… and there is no stopping. My mentor Heidi calls this “crossing the border” and I think that’s a perfect description.

It goes something like this:

You get the inspiration to create something, share your story, launch that project or just go beyond a previous limit.

Welcome to the border. Resistance steps in. Monkey-mind refrain begins: OMG, how do I get out of this? Get me out of this. This was such an enormous mistake.

Now, I wish I could say that everything has changed since this summer. That resistance is gone and I’m just living in the flow. But that would be a lie. For instance, it’s taken me a solid week of procrastinating to write this article.

Here’s another passage from The War of Art:

Resistance is directly proportional to love. If you’re feeling massive Resistance, there’s tremendous love there too. If you didn’t love the project that is terrifying you, you wouldn’t feel anything.

The more Resistance you experience, the more important your un-manifested art/project/enterprise is to you—and the more gratification you will feel when you finally do it.

Today, shards of resistance glitter all around me. The internet connection is funky. I am second-guessing writing about Joanne and Dad. The newsletter program keeps giving me an error message. I have a ton of client work to do. It’s the last sunny Sunday before the rains and I would much rather hike. There is so much that feels MORE urgent.

But I know that writing this is part of a bigger dream that I love… even more than hiking. And I know it will be fine once I just press “Send.”

I’ve had this photo pinned to my office wall all summer. It’s a snippet of a very long diorama–a rainforest fairyland that we stumbled across in our last moments at Oregon Country Fair in July. It stretched about 100 feet, every single inch teeming with crafty, miniature, elven life.

I could have stared at it for hours, because in each little piece was a glimpse of a whole world… A tiny parcel of an entire story.

This weekend, I was writing something about telling our true story. Why it’s hard and why it’s so compelling…. And it suddenly occurred to me why this fairyland had me so obsessed.

Like your story, this fairyland:

Offers a ton of possible entry points.

Is riveting and complete even if you look at it from just one spot.

Communicates the whole in a tiny sliver.

Most of the people I work with struggle with the how of telling their story. Where to begin. Where to go next.

Any of us could tell our story by beginning with what we ate for lunch just now, or how crushed we were when we were had to miss the 2nd Grade Christmas Pageant in which we were supposed to be singing Up On The Rooftop.

All of it matters. All of it counts.

Here are two ways to discover your story, inspired by this fairyland.

1. The trick of it is just to dive in… anywhere.

Find a place that feels good by scanning your life like I did this fairyland. I walked up and down and then just sat down at a spot that felt good—and examined everything that was going on. In this one picture, for example, you can see mushrooms, a tiny blue pond, glimmer lights outlining a mysterious cave, purple birds swarming a rock formation, ferns and moss and tiny trees….

When I have a Golden Thread session with a client, I always like to start with a single, simple story from childhood. Almost without exception, a lot gets revealed in this one story. So just think of one story from when you were small–one that you like to tell (or one you hate to have told). I bet there will be some juice there.

Here’s an example: A client told me how she loved to ride bareback with her little friends when she was 9 or 10. She felt so incredibly powerful and free. It’s a feeling she can still conjure in her dreams. And, you guessed it: Her business is helping women unblock their power and feel more free.

2. Let your story stand… it’s enough and you’re enough.

You really don’t need to explain. You can help your reader or listener by giving them a few hints and helping them connect the dots, but I promise you don’t have to give the whole blow-by-blow, first-this-happened, then-this-happens kind of tale in order for someone to get a good sense of you. (Just like I could get so much from one tiny section of the fairyland without someone telling me what else was there .)

Try it. Choose one of your key stories from childhood, then look at what your business is about at its core. See if a few of the dots don’t just automatically connect. Notice if what you felt or loved or got punished for as a kid has any connection with the offering you make today in your business. Does it?

You know what the main thing was about this fairyland? It really was pure magic. And so is your story.

Have fun. And if you have questions about your story or are interested in diving deeper…

The other day a new client was walking me through her vision for her latest project.

“This sounds fantastic,” I said. “All that’s missing is you.”

“Oh, sh*t.” she said. “I have to tell my story now, don’t I?” She lowered her head into her hands. “God… I knew I’d eventually have to do this.”

Story resistance like this is common.

But it’s also futile.

Because if you’re a business ownerwho is the face of your service business,the time to tell your story is going to come.

Here’s why you want to be ready…

As she told me her story over dinner, a couple of things happened (that frequently take place in the presence of good storytelling):

1. I started telling her my story as it relates to her very specific expertise-interrupting, laughing, cutting her off and jumping in with anecdotes.

2. I realized deep down I wanted to be her client (I’d never before considered this) and sign up for her next program.

The truth about sharing your story…

It’s intimidating. It can be scary. It’s easy to resist and work on other things instead, like your SEO and website colors.

But when you share your story powerfully and compellingly
with your ideal audience, amazing things can happen.

You give them the permission and possibility to recognize something in themselves they may not have let themselves see before. (HUGE.) And you show them the power and magic of the transformation you provide. (It’s a lot harder to do that with website colors.)

If you’d like to get a better handle on sharing your own story in a soulful, compelling and hard-to-forget way, come spend the day with me on June 20th.

In the sparkling high-desert air of Bend, Oregon, let’s get clear on the gold that’s hidden in your story.

I’m all about being open in storytelling. On the vulnerability scale, I’d give myself a good, solid 5. Honest, but pretty tidy and controlled.

On a retreat last week (with the inspiring Therese Skelly), we worked on visibility and what blocked us. Our task was to tell our raw story. The one we don’t want people to know. The one that is likely preventing us from really being seen because we are working so hard not to tell it.

I shared something I’ve only told a couple of friends and my husband, and managed to get through it in a weepy puddle. It felt good. Then I watched each of the others stand and tell her story. They were so beautiful. Unburdened from the old weight of not telling that story. So clear. So alive. So energized.

The next morning I woke up with what may have been the worst migraine of my life.

A mighty clamp-down after that spacious opening, perhaps? Made total sense to me.

As I lay there for many hours waiting for it to lessen, I felt for the clients I’ve encouraged to tell their most honest stories. It’s so important to do but it can be so damn hard.

How do we navigate this landscape of vulnerability?

Here’s what I came up with:

Vulnerability’s the thing, but it’s a delicate dance. While we are hard-wired to be tender and vulnerable—and to react compassionately when others are being this way, we’re also pretty hard-wired to protect ourselves at any cost.

Showing up truthfully is a good thing in this brave, new Brene Brown world we live in, but most of us didn’t grow up drawing attention to our flaws or insecurities. In fact, we worked over-time to appear like we had none of these:

Jugular. Achilles heel. Soft belly.

They were as well hidden as private parts in my early working days.

Years ago, I stumbled as I was walking past the Executive Director’s office where I worked. Actually, I face-planted on the carpet, throwing file folders and coffee everywhere. He made sure I was OK and that was that. Later that day, he was coming up the stairs as I was going down and I made some kind of half-ashamed/half-funny crack that he should watch out in case I tripped again.

He called me into my office and told me that the key to success was NEVER to draw attention to my errors, and NEVER to give someone the upper hand by admitting I’d made a mistake. Whew. Contrast that to my way, which had always been to bond with others by making self-deprecating comments that didn’t begin to cover up my sense of shame. Not exactly a recipe for wild career success—but a vague attempt at some level of vulnerability.

I was confused, yet I knew there had to be a way to tell the truth without putting myself down.

I thank God the days of shoulder pads and cover-your-ass business strategies are behind me. But that doesn’t mean this more-open world is super easy to figure out. I got a migraine after revealing my truth to just five people, after all.

I believe the world is a safe and kind place–much kinder and safer than I thought it to be 20 years ago. And I am all about sharing the truth as a compelling and powerful way to connect. That doesn’t mean leaping into the marketplace showing only your soft belly, however.

Here are a few suggestions for easing into vulnerability:

Get very intimate with your story. Tell it “raw,” then tell it with the lesson learned or insight received.

Work through your emotions to get to the core and truth of the stories you share and why you share them.

Trust that vulnerability doesn’t mean you need to share every story from every stage.

Look at the story through the lens of your ideal client and find the thread that reveals the unique essence of you and what you provide them.

The Golden Thread session is a great way to explore the raw version of your story so you can begin to craft it into a powerful signature speech or website copy.

“Wow, there is magic around you! This is super, super awesome. While reading [my Golden Thread] I experienced the curious combination of deep relief, open weeping, and laughter. That is exactly it!”

Last week, I was very happy to attend Align It Live, the 3-day event in Las Vegas my coach, Darla LeDoux, hosted.

Some of the beautiful truth-tellers in our mastermind group
sharing their stories on Darla’s success panel.

On the first morning, Darla showed a clip of Jared Leto accepting his Oscar in February. (Just click here to watch if you haven’t seen this). She asked what we concluded about the actor based on these 2 minutes of watching him. People volunteered that they determined he’s family-focused, smart, brave, calm, confident, and compassionate—someone they could trust and wanted to spend time with…

We loved him. The world loved him.

And we all made a lot of snap judgments about him, too.

As people always do.

Darla then said something that turned out to be
a game-changer for me:

“We don’t exist except for the lens
people see us through.”

A truth about our species: We’ve all got automatic and complicated lenses through which we view the world. This is not a bad thing… it’s a survival thing.

Climb down inside your ancestral self for a moment…

Your lens was a super-powerful and necessary tool. You had to rely on it to tell you who to trust and who to run from. It helped discern quickly between “safe, known tribesperson” and “dangerous, unknown stranger.”

Your lens shows you who to like and who to avoid… and who is your peer, teacher, or competitor.

Looking back at that Oscar speech, we can see where this whole idea gets meaty and interesting… especially for entrepreneurs like you who lead with your story.

Before we could really dive into all that judging, assessing and conclusion-drawing we do, Jared Leto handed us a lens.

That’s what you do when you share your story, too.

Your audience’s minds are going to start working like frantic squirrels trying to figure you out when you appear before them (whether on stage or online).

So, why not hand them a lens to help them see more quickly if you are their tribe?

One of the things I love about working with people on the theme of their story (what I call their Golden Thread) is that it gives them a lens that helps them look at their own life. So instead of seeing your life as this tangled line-up of random, tender, or embarrassing, when you look through the lens of your Golden Thread the anecdotes that are most effective to tell simply rise up and make themselves known.

Now for the game-changer. I see that the lens is not only for the storyteller…. It’s also for the audience.

Sure, people watching you are going to respond in their automatic way to your hair/shoes/car/hands/voice/sense of humor or _____(fill in blank).

But when you share your story masterfully, you may just over-ride that knee-jerk response to help them see the YOU that exists beyond their lens… and more importantly, how you connect with THEM and help them transform.

A few of us past and present masterminders.
All with big messages and new insights to share—it’s good noteverything that happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.